Returning to Home Brewing With a Few Questions

[BrewHouse]

G’Day Guys,

I am back in the brewing game after about 3 years off. We moved house and had a baby in the meantime without much spare time.
Back in the day I was just brewing Ales with a wet towel wrapped around the fermenter.
Now I am back I have a better set-up then before that I am really happy about. I have our old tucker box freezer in the garage to ferment in hooked up to a Keg King temperature controller. I can now brew anything I want at anytime of the year. (Hopefully) Just set and forget. Great bit of gear!!!

http://www.kegking.com.au/Temperature%2 ... vices.html

For my first brew back I have put down a Lager with Saflager S-23 yeast. The freezer is set to 12 degrees and It's working like a charm.
With the Ales the fermentation and air lock activity was pretty intense. Now in the freezer at lower temps not a lot seems to be happening. It has been down for about a week. A bit of condensation on the lid but not much else. Is this normal?

Also I am thinking about getting a second fermenter to rack the beer into. I have not done this before but think it might be worthwhile. I have also been looking at these filters:

http://www.kegking.com.au/Beer%20Filter ... idges.html

I have a couple of questions here regarding these:

1: Do they filter the yeast out of the beer?
2: Are they any good?
3: Would you bother using one if you are going to rack the beer or is that the perfect time to use it?
4: Instead of racking could you use this at bottling or kegging time?

I think that is all for now. I am glad to be back in the world of home brewing. I also have a beer fridge next to the freezer so will look at a Keg set-up in the not too distant future.

Cheers,

BrewHouse

[squirt in the turns]

Hi BrewHouse and welcome to the forum!

Lager fermentation takes longer as the yeast works slower at lower temperatures. Don't rely on the airlock as an indicator of activity (in fact, for the next batch ditch the airlock and lid and and just glad-wrap the top of the fermenter). If you're concerned, take hydrometer readings to see how your beer is progressing.

Regarding your filtering questions:

1: Do they filter the yeast out of the beer? That's their primary function
2: Are they any good? I have this one which looks basically the same, and it works great (when used properly).
3: Would you bother using one if you are going to rack the beer or is that the perfect time to use it? Racking can help to leave a lot of yeast/trub in primary, but filtering will get you even closer to a beer that could be called "bright" by commercial standards.
4: Instead of racking could you use this at bottling or kegging time? Probably, but see my further thoughts below.

When I first started filtering, I transferred the beer using gravity, from primary to filter to keg, and bottled any extra by taking the keg quick disconnect off the line and putting the line into the bottle, priming with sugar as normal. These bottles still primed as although the filter removes yeast, it is impossible to remove all of it (they just took a while to carb up). I never got bright beer with this method though. Obviously the yeast in the bottles multiples as it consumes the priming sugar, but the kegged beer remained hazed too. A pro brewer advised me that oxidation caused this, due to exposure to atmosphere during filtering. I couldn't detect any oxidised flavours (I assume my palate has a high threshold for those flavours), but the pro could. I tried "purging" the filter with CO2 just by giving it a blast from the cylinder, but this didn't work.

What I now do is:
1) Rack from primary to keg and chill.
2) --Optional step(s)-- add any finings such as Polyclar. Don't use gelatine, you don't need it if you're filtering and it's gross
3) Fill filter housing with Starsan solution, add cartridge and screw lid on.
4) Push all Starsan out of filter using CO2. The housing is now as close as is practical to being completely free of Oxygen.
5) Filter under gravity (saves on gas) using this method

After sanitising/purging the filter, the whole thing is a sealed system that prevents Oxygen exposure. There are those out there that filter from primary, but I don't know how you'd get a satisfactory result from it. My success with my filter seems to depend on a closed and purged system, which a fermenter is not. Purging the filter as I describe in step 4 would probably work to filter straight from primary, but you'd have to have a CO2 cyciinder and most of the other paraphernalia that goes with kegging anyway, and keg-to-keg is more foolproof IMO.

TL;DR: Don't bother filtering until you start kegging. Purge the filter properly. Filter keg-to-keg.

[emnpaul]

Condensation under the lid is a better indication of fermentation than a bubbling airlock. Not much better, only a touch. The only way to be completely sure of fermentation is to take a hydrometer reading. Be aware though, that lager yeasts are a fair bit slower than ale, at least initially, so your hydro readings might not move all that much for the first 4 or 5 days. Unless you're worried sick (cold sweat, sleepless nights, domestic violence ) then I'd say don't even bother with the hydro readings for at least 3 weeks and just let nature take it's course.

I don't filter so I'd be even less help there.

BTW, welcome back.